Charles Leclerc says he “believes in miracles” and is motivated to “do something versy special” after a disastrous qualifying session in Abu Dhabi.
Leclerc had a 10-place penalty for taking a new battery and then lost his best lap to a track limits offence in Q2, leaving him 14th.
He starts 19th as Franco Colapinto was 19th and had a five-place penalty, and thus starts behind the Ferrari.
With the McLarens on the front of the grid Ferrari’s chances of winning the 2024 constructors’ championship have faded, but Leclerc hasn’t given up.
“Obviously I don’t feel good after a qualifying like that,” he said. “I don’t think I would have managed to beat the McLarens, they were too strong, but we could have been fourth.
“Obviously I got my lap time deleted. We are not making our life any easier. However, it motivates me to do something very special tomorrow, and my goal remains the same, it’s to win the constructors’ championship, and I still believe in it as much as I did yesterday, even though on paper obviously is going to be hard.”
He added: “I believe in miracles. Again it makes our life very difficult, that’s for sure. But with the 10 grid places penalty, it was always going to be difficult.
“But I see an opportunity to do something very special, and I’ll do my best to do it. And I think, yeah, I’ll believe in it until the very last lap. Anything can happen.”
Leclerc is confident that Ferrari has a good car for the race.
“The race pace was okay, but McLaren seemed to be a lot stronger,” he said. “But again, we’ve changed quite a bit the car since FP3, so I think we went in the right direction.
“And if anything, our tyre degradation is better than others, so I would expect to go in a good position.”
Lewis Hamilton was left frustrated in qualifying in Abu Dhabi after a stray plastic bollard became stuck under his car for the last part of his final lap in Q1.
Hamilton hit it after it was dislodged by Kevin Magnussen, who cut across the inside of a corner in an effort to get out of the way.
He was left stranded in 18th at the end of the session, but he gains two places thanks to grid penalties for Alex Albon and Charles Leclerc.
In contrast to his struggling team mate George Russell Hamilton was happy with his W15 after making set-up changes through the weekend, and thought he was in the fight for the top three.
He made his frustration clear on team radio, although later he downplayed his disappointment.
“I don’t have that many emotions,” he said when asked by this writer about his feelings in the circumstances. “I’m pretty chilled. It was an unfortunate session, and I got the bollard under the car.”
Hamilton acknowledged the special circumstances of his last weekend with Mercedes.
“I think for me I’ve just been very present, I’ve been enjoying every moment,” he said. “I’ve got the car in a really good place, the set up changes we’ve been making.
“The car has been completely different to the last five races this weekend, it’s been feeling really great. And so it is unfortunate.”
He noted that he’d been losing out in the slow last sector of the lap.
“That’s where we struggled the most as a team this weekend, but the car was feeling really good in general. In P3 I was third, and so I honestly, I thought we’re going to be fighting for podium, and my race pace was second quickest.”
He added: “It’s not going to be easy to overtake tomorrow. I’ve got to work on strategy now, and instead of fighting for a podium, let’s see how far I can get. If I can get into the top 10, that would be amazing.”
Asked how he might feel on Sunday he said: “It’s going to be like, I made it. I survived a very, very hardcore year. And kind of, I’m going to be sad not to be racing anymore this year, but hopefully next year comes around soon enough, and I’m just going to miss all these people that I got to work with.”
Greenwood is with Alpine this weekend ahead of a fulltime role in 2025
Veteran former Ferrari Formula 1 race engineer Dave Greenwood is to officially take up a fulltime role as Alpine’s racing director in January.
Greenwood has latterly been working for Hitech as the right hand man of boss Oliver Oakes, and he has been overseeing the F2 operation since Oakes moved into the Alpine team principal job.
Greenwood attended the recent US GP with Alpine, and in Abu Dhabi this weekend he is starting the transition into his new job, although Oakes has confirmed that he officially starts next month. He will leave his Hitech F2 job to focus solely on the F1 operation.
The new role sees him sit below Oakes and alongside executive technical director David Sanchez in the management structure.
In addition to his links with Oakes Greenwood is also the latest of a number of former Enstone staff members to have returned to the team since Flavio Briatore became involved as executive consultant.
“He’s been with me a long time,” Oakes told this writer. “He’s got a lot of F1 experience, he’s obviously returning to Enstone, and he’s been a right hand of mine for a few years.”
Defining Greenwood’s job description as racing director he added: “I think every team has a different remit. In his case, he’s in a leadership position with myself and David there.
“He’ll bring a lot of experience, as the title says across all the racing team, but also across technical and engineering as well. It’s a broad role, and it’s good to have him by my side.”
Greenwood is best known for his spell at Ferrari where he worked as Kimi Raikkonen’s race engineer, but he brings experience from several teams to the Alpine camp.
He started his F1 career as a vehicle dynamicist with BAR Honda in 2000. He joined Renault at the start of 2005 as a race and performance engineer, and was with the team through its two World Championship seasons with Fernando Alonso.
He joined the startup Virgin/Manor team in 2010, staying with the new operation under the Marussia name until late 2014, when he joined Ferrari. He remained at Maranello until early 2018.
Greenwood then had a spell in sportscar racing, initially as technical director with Manor Endurance, before he took up a similar role with Zak Brown’s United Autosports operation.
He joined Hitech in early 2022 and was one of the key players in building up a fledgling team as Oakes tried to gain an F1 entry. When the bid was rejected the F1 operation was closed down.
Kevin Magnussen has had a change of race engineer for his final weekend at Haas
Veteran race engineer Mark Slade has left the Haas Formula 1 team on the eve of Kevin Magnussen’s final race in Abu Dhabi.
Slade was still looking after Magnussen last weekend in Qatar, but he is not at the Yas Marina Circuit, and is understood to have cut his ties with the team. Haas declined to comment on the situation.
Slade will be replaced this weekend by head of performance engineering Dominic Haines, who used to be a race engineer for Romain Grosjean and others before stepping back into a more factory-based role.
He was due to be in Abu Dhabi anyway for the upcoming test, but is now running Magnussen this weekend as the team fights Alpine and VCARB in the constructors’ championship.
Slade brought a wealth of experience gained with McLaren, Renault/Lotus and Mercedes to Haas when he joined in September 2022.
He started at McLaren in 1991, and over 18 years with the Woking outfit he worked in a variety of engineering roles, notably with Mika Hakkinen, David Coulthard and Kimi Raikkonen, including during the latter’s two title near misses in 2003 and 2005.
He moved to Renault for the 2010 season but then switched to Mercedes in 2011 to engineer Michael Schumacher, assisted by Lewis Hamilton’s current engineer, Peter Bonnington.
However he again stayed for only one season before moving back to Renault in 2012. He stayed with the Enstone team through the Lotus years, when he was reunited with Raikkonen.
In 2017-’19 he ran Nico Hulkenberg. His last trackside role with Renault was running Esteban Ocon in 2020, before a reshuffle at the end of the season. He subsequently left the team, and was on the sidelines for a while before he joined Haas.
Slade is highly regarded by drivers with whom he’s formed a close bond, such as Heikki Kovalainen, who worked with him at McLaren in 2008 and 2009 and again briefly at Lotus in 2013.
“I think having Mark Slade as my engineer was a significant factor,” the Finn told this writer. “It was relatively easy to start working with him [at Lotus] because I knew him from McLaren days, and I knew how he works.
“He knew what I needed as well. If I got lost he could actually make suggestions just by looking at the telemetry, so it was really helpful. I had a good time at McLaren with him and he’s worked with some really good drivers, and he’s obviously a great engineer.”
Christian Horner admits that extending Sergio Perez’s Red Bull Racing deal for two years early in the season “obviously didn’t work.”
Perez’s new contract was announced on June 4 after a run of podiums early in the season, but immediately after a first lap accident in Monaco that in retrospect signalled a downturn in his fortunes.
At the time the team was in some turmoil and there were question marks over Max Verstappen’s future.
Horner that signing Perez brought continuity and stability, and it was widely interpreted that it was about keeping Verstappen onside with a team mate that he knew well.
However since then Perez has struggled and it’s widely expected that he won’t continue in 2025 – in which case the team is likely to have to pay a hefty price for him not to race.
Asked by this writer if he had any regrets about concluding the deal so early Horner rather than keeping the team’s options open admitted that it hadn’t worked.
“Obviously, at the time Sergio was performing extremely well,” he said. “I think he had, what, four podiums in the first five races?
“And in order to settle his mind and extend that run of form for the rest of the season, we elected to go early – which obviously didn’t work.
“That’s just life sometimes. And I think Checo, you have to look beyond this year for the contribution he’s made to our team. He’s been a great team player. He’s a great person. He’s extremely popular within the team.
“He’s worked very hard over the four years that he’s been with us, and he’s played a vital role in the constructors’ championships that we’ve won, the five Grand Prix victories that he had in our car, it’s been the most successful pairing that we’ve ever had, finishing first and second in the drivers’ championship, last year.
“So I think nobody more is frustrated with the results than Checo, from his own high standards. And that’s obviously been painful for him, for the team, and we’ve worked tremendously hard to try and support him, and we’ll continue to do so all the way up until the chequered flag on Sunday, where hopefully he can get a good result at the final race of the year.”
Horner hinted that there’s a scenario where Perez himself decides to stop.
“There’s huge respect for Checo within the team, and nobody likes to see him struggling like the way he has,” he said. “And we’ll sit down and discuss things after the season.
“We’ve got two talented drivers in VCARB, so but until the situation is clear with Sergio, what he wants to do, everything else is purely speculation.”
Norris says Qatar will be more painful if Norris misses the title
Lando Norris says he’s moved on from his contentious yellow flag penalty in Qatar – but he fears that could yet be a “bad consequence” if McLaren misses out on the Formula 1 constructors’ title due to the lost points.
Norris was given a 10 second stop and go penalty for not slowing when yellow flags were shown after Ale Albon’s mirror was left lying on the track on the approach to Turn 1.
He initially dropped out of the top 10 but recovered to take 10th place and the fastest lap point – however Ferrari was able to significantly close the gap to just 21 points heading into the final race.
“I was disappointed,” said Norris when asked by this writer about putting the penalty behind him. “I wasn’t happy with myself on Sunday night, but I’ve not been down or anything over the last few days.
“It’s been nice that we can come here and focus already on the final weekend of the season. And there’s a lot of focus on it.
“There’s not been a bad consequence of what’s happened, it might be on Sunday afternoon I feel the consequence more so, but we’re working hard to make sure that doesn’t happen, and I don’t feel the real pain of last weekend.”
Norris insisted that it was impossible for him to have seen the yellow light on the straight.
“There was no yellow lights that I passed,” he said. You can say that there was one, but no chance any driver can see that. So I mean, not ideal. Obviously, I was pretty disappointed. I let a lot of people down, but it happened. It’s in the past.
“I’ve apologised to the team. I would never want something like that to happen. Normally, I think, pretty good with those kind of things, and we never take the risk and normally be on the safer side of things. #
“So it was just unfortunate, difficult to see the yellow flags in the dark and that kind of thing. Just a shame, but it’s happened, and I feel like I moved on pretty well from it.”
Asked about the scale of the penalty he said: “I’m going to have to accept the penalty for what it was. Yes, that’s the ruling. For what the safety measures were. You know, in an ideal world, maybe there could be some differences. I get why there’s a such a severe penalty for it, but no people were in danger. It wasn’t like there was someone on track.
“It was a wing mirror. And if it’s something so severe, the race should be stopped, like a VSC or a safety car, then cleared, then continued. Double yellow is be prepared to stop.
“No one’s prepared to stop when you’re going 300 kph, not one driver on the grid is prepared to stop. I think there’s something completely separate to actually what happened? I didn’t see the yellow flag, and I got the penalty, and I paid the price.
“But I think everyone can agree that what it was is severe for what you see, and what the actual danger was. But the rule is the rule.”
Norris denied that there’s any extra pressure on McLaren this weekend
“There’s a lot of external pressure, but I think within the team, not a lot changes. There’s been pressure the whole season to perform and to do well, there’s been pressure the whole season for me as a driver, to perform well, especially the second half of the year.
“I feel like I’ve been doing that, but it’s more external pressure that I think people have to deal with.
“And that’s engineers, mechanics and things like that. I’m sure everyone within the team feels a little bit more nervous coming into the final race, but at the same time, nothing should change.
“Nothing needs to change. The job we’ve been doing is very good. I’m proud of the whole team, and we just continue doing the same as what we have been doing.”
Toto Wolff has made clear his feeling about Christian Horner…
Toto Wolff has slammed Red Bull Racing boss Christian Horner in the wake of the escalation of the war of words between their drivers, George Russell and Ma Verstappen.
Wolff was left fuming in Qatar after Horner suggested that Russell had been “quite hysterical” in the stewards hearing that led a penalty for his driver.
In Abu Dhabi on Thursday Wolff suggested that Horner was “weak” and was “falling short in his role”, in effect for not telling Verstappen that he might be two sides to the story.
“I think as a team principal It’s important to be a sparring partner for your drivers,” he said. “And that means explaining that things can be more nuanced. Statements that are absolutistic, thinking that everything is either right, 100% right or 100% wrong, it’s just something you I think you need to explain. Think more nuanced, not depending from your perception and your perspective.
“You need to allow for something to be 51/49 you need to allow it to be 70/30, so there’s always another side. And maybe when you look at it that way, and you explain it to your drivers and to your team, you come to the conclusion that there is truth on both sides. If you don’t do that, you’re falling short of your role, It’s just weak.
“Why does he feel entitled to comment about my driver? How does that come? But you know, thinking about it, yapping little terror. Always something to say.”
He made it clear that the hysterical comment had particularly riled him.
“There is a thing between drivers, and this is George and Max, and I don’t want to get involved in that,” he said. “But if the other team principal calls George hysteric, this is where he crosses the line for me.”
now his forte for sure, is not intellectually psychoanalysis. That’s quite a word. How dare you? How dare you comment on the state of mind of my driver.”
Verstappen won’t back down on his Russell comments
Max Verstappen says he has no regrets on any comments he made either to George Russell directly or to the media in the wake of the FIA stewards’ hearing in Qatar.
He also accused the Mercedes driver of “lying” in the stewards’ hearing that led to him being sanctioned.
Verstappen received a one-place grid penalty after being found to have driven excessively slowly in Q3 and hampered Russell.
After winning the race Verstappen told the media that Russell had actively tried to get him a penalty and that he had never seen a fellow driver act that way.
Although he didn’t reference it himself after the hearing Verstappen had threatened to put Russell “on his head” at the first corner should he receive a penalty.
Asked by this writer on Thursday in Abu Dhabi if he had any regrets about anything he said Verstappen was unrepentant.
“No regrets at all, because I meant everything I said,” he said. “And it’s still the same. If I had to do it again, maybe I would have said even more, knowing the outcome of the race result. I still can’t believe that someone can be like that in a stewards’ room.
“For me, that was so unacceptable, because I mean, we’re all racing drivers. We all have a lot of respect for each other. We even play sports together. You travel together. And of course, you have moments where you get together, you crash or whatever.
“You’re not happy. In my whole career, I’ve never experienced what I have experienced in the stewards’ room in Qatar. And for me, that was really unacceptable.”
Asked if Russell being a director of the GPDA and thus a representative of all the drivers Verstappen said that had no impact on his thinking.
“No, it has nothing to do with him being the director of the GPDA. I just never expected someone to really try and actively get someone a penalty that badly and lying about why I was doing what I was doing.
“But clearly, it had an influence to them. Yeah, it was just really not nice, and actually very shocking what was going on there.”
Regarding the way he reported Lando Norris for not slowing for yellows in Sunday’s race he said: “It was just a normal question. I mean, I knew that I lifted, and I suddenly look in the mirror, and I saw that the gap closed up a lot.
“So I just asked, did he lift or not, just to double check. Of course, sometimes with yellow flags, some people lift more than others. And yeah, you can gain some tens here or there. I luckily tried to play it safe, and then just asked and see the outcome of it.”
Franco Colapinto says that it was “quite stupid” for rivals to take risks at the start of the Qatar GP.
The Williams driver was collected at the first corner by Esteban Ocon, who had in turn been hit by Nico Hulkenberg, the German having struggled for grip on the hard tyre.
Colapinto and Ocon were out on the spot, while Hulkenberg was able to continue.
The significance for Colapinto was not only did his FW46 sustain more damage he also lost of his last two remaining chances of 2024 to demonstrate his potential.
“It’s very disappointing, I just got taken out at T1, and nothing I could do really,” he said when asked by this writer about his brief race.
“It’s quite frustrating. In T1, starting on the back from P18/19, it’s quite stupid to risk it so much, and I left a very big gap on the inside.
“And they still drove into the side of me. So nothing I could do, We’ll try to understand how we can fix the car for Abu Dhabi, that’s going to be the most important point.”
The high attrition rate made an early retirement even more frustrating.
“It’s not the best situation,” he said. Looking at the race as well, it looked quite exciting. So it would have been quite nice to be there, and trying to fight for points. But it’s part of racing, and unfortunately it didn’t go as planned today.
“Sometimes you have these ups and downs. As Alex, we both had a pretty tough couple of races, and I think the most important thing is try to end up strong in Abu Dhabi, and finish the year on a high.
“We are going to try to fix the car the best we can, and try to go with the best package possible to Abu Dhabi.”
Colapinto acknowledged that it was frustrating to be robbed of one of his last two chances to impress potential future employers.
“Especially to be taken out in Turn 1,” he said. “It’s always the most frustrating, because you cannot really do anything. I didn’t get to do one corner. It’s just disappointing, especially with the race.
“We all thought it was going to be a bit of a boring race, and at the end, it was very exciting, and it opened a lot of opportunities for everyone. So it’s part of racing. Sometimes it doesn’t go as you want.”
Liam Lawson insists that a scrappy Qatar GP won’t impact his future prospects despite it coming just as Red Bull makes up its mind about who will replace Sergio Perez in 2025.
Lawson spun at the first safety car restart in Qatar, forcing Valtteri Bottas off the road. He subsequently received a 10-second penalty.
Later in the race both he and team mate Yuki Tsunoda were switched to soft tyres in an attempt to find some performance.
However that gamble didn’t pay off, and they finished 13th and 14th, with the Japanese driver ahead.
The result dropped the team further away from Alpine and Haas in the battle for sixth in the constructors’ table.
Lawson remains favourite to land the RBR seat, and he insists that one frustrating Sunday won’t impact his future.
“Honestly, nothing’s really changed from where I sit,” he said when asked by this writer about the unfortunate timing.
“We had some positives this weekend. Sprint quali was strong for us, and obviously yesterday, we struggled more in quali.
“But after the spin to be honest we caught the field and had okay pace. So there’s points to take away from it, but overall we didn’t have the package this weekend to fight against the teams we need to fight against.”
Lawson took full responsibility for the Bottas incident, apologising to the Finn when they met in the media pen after the race.
“It was just my bad,” he said. “I thought we had really good temperature to be honest, like I worked a lot the tyres on the restart, under the safety car, went for a move and half way around the corner, I realised I was sliding up the track towards him.
“And at that point, I just tried to get out of it honestly, because I was about to hit him. So I tried to check up and spun the car. I don’t know if we touched, I guess we did, but that was on me.”
He added: “Obviously, he did nothing wrong. I didn’t expect him to stay out there, to be honest. And because he did, obviously I was sliding up the track. But it was my fault.”
Lawson admitted that the soft tyre gamble didn’t work.
“I think we weren’t going to score points from where we were. So we just tried something soft. Softs obviously didn’t work.
“We had a small issue as well that we were managing at the end. But, yeah, it’s just been a tough day. But honestly, I put ourselves in that position when I spun the car.”
Adam Cooper F1 